BEIRUT BOMBING: MYSTERIOUS DEATH WARRIORS TRACED TO SYRIA, IRAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807600023-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 18
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: February 1, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807600023-9
.ARTICLE APP
00 !?AGE
trial is a known staging ground for
Beirut ,bombing: Mysterious Death
warriors Traced to Syria, bran
This is the first of.a series of reports on
terrorism written and reported by Wash-
ington Post staff writers Bob Woodward,
Richard Harwood and Christian Williams.
Three days before a bomb blast killed
241 American servicemen at the -Beirut air-
port. Oct. 23, a Lebanese financial emissary
named Hassan Hamiz was ziven a check or
voucher for approximately $50.000 that
could be cashed only at the Iranian embas-
sies in Beirut or Damascus, according to
reliable intelligencrtc The reports
indicate that, after the bombing, it was
cache a~ the zilbass, i~, D=ascus_ where
Hamiz. described as a "fix r" wi .h i
level contacts, had very close relations with
Iranian Ambassador Ali Akbaar Mohta-
shami, who has been identified by the CIA
as a kev figure in Middle East terrorism.
fihe $50,000 payment is believed to be a
primary link in the financing that set in
motion two fanatical suicide truck-bomb
attacks that destroyed the U.S. Marine em-
placement and also killed 58 soldiers at the
French military headquarters in Beirut
that same October morning, according to a
review of intelligence documents and inter-
views with officials in the United States,
Middle East and Europe.
Investigations by the'CIA and French,
Israeli and Lebanese intelligence services
have pieced together many of the essential
details of the devastation of Oct. 23, per-
petrated bye "men who crave death as sol-
diers of their God and-planned by others
who rely on the terror factor as the most
effective brand of litical warfare. The
events that ended with the blood and rub-
le of that massive explosion inclu ea
complex series of transactions, codenames,
meetings in Beirut. the Bekaa Vallev in
Lebanon and Damascus, and trucks nog
explosives under cover ponce t14nsp
In addition to Hamiz,13 individuals now
have been tied to the bombings by the in-
telligence services. They include a Syrian
WASHINGTON POST
1 February 1984
FACiDR
Part I
intelligence colone a former L security
officer, Syrian members of the Syrian-con-
trolled Saiqa (Thunderbolt) Palestinian
terrorist organization, a relative of the Shi-
ite Moslem leader in Lebanon's Bekaa Val-
ley, an .Islamic fundamentalist clergyman
from Beirut and several veterans of other
"-terrorist operations. Among them are:
-The Syrian intelligence officer, iden-
tified by various intelligence organizations
as Lt. Col. Diyab (also spelled Diab), has
been traced to a planning meeting Oct. 21
or 22, just before the Marine bombing. Sur=
veillance reports show that he was in the
southern suburbs of Beirut and was plan-
ning an attack against French and Amer-
ican installations.
? A key. architect of the operation, ac-
cording to Israeli intelligence, is identified
as Nablan Shaykh, a former deputy chief
of national security for the Palestine Lib-
eration Organization. He operated under
the code name Abu Kifah and had been in
charge of security-in- a west Beirut neigh-
borhood at the Museum Crossing on the
line dividing Christian eastern and
Moslem western Beirut.
? Two other Syrian officials in
Saiqa, a PLO organization founded
and controlled by the Syrian mili-
tary, attended meetings on Oct. 21
and 22 and discussed a strike against
the multinational forces in Beirut.
One Saiqa . member, Ahmed
Halaq, is identified in intelligence
reports as a specialist in assassina-
tions. He had been in Lebanon's
Bekaa Valley, a Syrian-controlled "
area about 30 miles east of Beirut
terrorists. Halaq was placed in the
Bekaa region about a week before
the Oct. 23 bombing.'
The second man is Bilal Hasan.
Within days of the suicide attacks,
these two men were later found to
have visited the Palestinian refugee
camps of Sabra and Shatilla, the
former- PLO neighborhoods where
hundreds of people were massacred
by Phalangist militia in 1982. The
reason for their visit has not been
determined, but Israeli intelligence
sources claim that weapons and ex-
plosives were still stockpiled in such
camps.
alaq and Hasan were tied to
attempted terrorism in Egypt
in 1979, when two other ter-
rorists were arrested in Cairo with
toothpaste tubes filled with high ex-
plosives. After confessing, the two
terrorists identified Hasan as the
person who recruited them and
Halaq as a Syrian intelligence cap-
tain who prepared their explosives.
*Abu Hgydar.Musawi, a cousin of
a Shiite leader in the Syrian-con-
trolled Bekaa Valley, visited Beirut
several days before Oct. 23 and was
involved in obtaining the pickup
trucks used in the bombing. Accord.
ing to intelligence reports, he heads
what is called the Hussein Suicide
Commandos, and intelligence reports
say that immediately before or right
after Oct. 23 he claimed he was
going to report the outcome of the
planned operations to his cousin
Hussein Musawi, in the Bekaa Val-
ley. Hamiz, the Lebanese financial
emissary who cashed the $50,000
check after the bombing, is also dose
to Hussein Musawi, the reports in-
dicate.
~'4.1~T_=tTI1lJEU
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Hussein Musawi has previously
been named in press accounts as one
of the people involved in the bomb-
ing. He has denied a direct or'indi-
rect role but praised the bombing by
saying: "I salute this good .act and I
consider it a good deed and a legit-
imate right, and I bow to the spirits
of the martyrs who carried out this
-operation."
? Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah,
the second person 'named in press
accounts, is the leader of the Hez-
ballah (Part), of God), a militant
Shiite movement based in Beirut's
southern suburbs. The movement
embraces remnants of the radical Al
Dawa (The Call) party, which is now
based in Iran.
Fadlallah has close ties to the gov-
ernment, of Iranian leader Ayatollah
Ruhoaah Khomeini He had fre-
quent dealings with the Iranian Em-
bassy in Beirut until the Iranians
were expelled following the Oct. 23
bombings. At the time of this expul-
sion, Fadlallah led mass demonstra-
tions in Beirut protesting the action
by the Lebanese government. Hus-
sein Musawi is considered to be Fad-
lallah's lieutenant and principal mil-
itary commander.
F adlallah and the key planner,
Nablan Shaykh, attended a
planning meeting Oct. 20 at
the Soviet-Palestinian friendship
house in Damascus, which since last
summer has been used by dissident
PLO leaders. They discussed attacks
against the multinational force in
Beirut, according to intelligence re-
ports.
Two weeks ago Fadlallah could i
not be located in Beirut, and sources
said he was in Tehran for meetings
with' government officials. The
speaker of the Iranian parliament,
Hojatoleslam All ' Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, met with Fadlallah yes-
terday, according to Reuter, and
urged the recruitment of more "self-
sacrificing youths" to -carry out sui-
cide attacks on the U.S. and French
peace-keeping forces in Lebanon.
According to Reuter, Fadlallah re-
plied: "Our aim is to expel the ag-
gressive-forces of the. United States'
and `-other so-called multinational
forces including the Zionists."
Intelligence reports indicate that
on. the night of Oct. 22, just
hours before the bombings, Fad-
lallah received-either in his apart-
ment or at his mosque in Beirut-
the two men who drove the trucks
on the suicide bomings. He blessed
them, gave them so-called deeds or
guarantees to their places in para-
dise, where they would have eternal
joy. According to one resident in Bir
Abed, the suburb in southern Beirut
where Fadlallah lives and has his
mosque, as receritly as two weeks ago
Fadlallah preached to 300 fighters,
aged 14 to 30, and promised any
man who killed an' Israeli in south-
ern Lebanon a place in paradise.
? Ahmed Qudura, a former PLO
Fatah member, and a second man
identified in intelligence reports only
as Umayah, a security officer of the
rebel PLO group led by Abu Musa, -
have also been tied to the planning
sessions on Oct. 21 or 22 attended
by chief planner Shaykh and Diyab.
The intelligence agencies have es-
tablished that four others collabo-
rated in the bombings. One of them
obtained the explosives after being
turned down by a Lebanese-supplier.
All four were followers of Hussein
Musawi whose loyalty to him had
resulted in their expulsion from the
mainline Shiite group in Lebanon
called AmaL Hussein Musawi
formed a rival organization called
Islamic Aural.
Two of the four, Ali Fatuni and
Ibrahim Aqil, had been accused in
the July 1983 terrorist attack on
Lebanese Prime Minister Shafiq
Wazzan, in which a remote-con--
trolled car bomb only partially det-
onated and no injuries resulted. The
five suspects arrested in the assas-
sination attempt named Aqil as the
man who rigged the car with 154
pounds of explosives. He has also
been tied to the Nov. 4, 1983, sui-
cide-bombing of the Israeli Defense
Forces interrogation center at Tyre,
in southern Lebanon, in which 29
Israelis and 32 Arab detainee4 were
One week after the bombings, in
an interview with Washington Post
correspondent Herbert H. Denton,
Fadlallah denied any involvement.
He said any such charges were a
frame-up by Christian Phalangist
militiamen and the Lebanese Army
intelligence. During the interview in
Beirut's Shiite Moslem slums Fad-
lallah * was guarded by men holding
AK47 Kalashnikov assault rifles.
Asked about the show of force by a
man who said he was interested only
in peace, Fadlallah laughed. "This,"
he replied, "is for people who don't
understand my concept of peace."
killed.
The other two are Ali Majid and
Wafiq Safa. It was Safa, intelligence
reports say, who approached Leba-
nese and Palestinian suppliers ' sev-
eral days before' Oct. 23 .to request
about 4,000 pounds of explosives. He
specified that the explosives were for
a special operation and that they
had to fit into two pickup trucks.
According to a Middle East intelli-
gence officer, Safa was asked at this
meeting whether the special opera-
tion had been approved by the Is-
lamic Amal leadership. Safa replied
that, as a follower of Hussein
Musawi, he was "immune" to Islamic
Amal, and that the operation was
authorized by Syria and was being
organized as a result of Syrian "in-
spiration."
In all, Safa claimed he had three
trucks with forged documents and
falsified markings from TMA,
Trans-Mediterranean Airways, a
Lebanese cargo airlines. The cover
was perfect, -he said, because the
trucks were precisely the type nor-
mally used to transport rice and
other goods. These trucks were
known by all and would not be
stopped, -the reports state he said. In
the actual- bombings, a Mercedes
Benz truck was used at the Marine
headquarters and a red van was used
at the French headquarters.
The Lebanese declined to provide
the explosives. An apparent effort to
smuggle in the explosives from the
Bekaa Valley was also unsuccessful.
According to Israeli intelligence, Safa
and his men tapped into secret
caches still in west Beirut kept by
persons loyal to PLO rebel leader
Abu Musa, whose full name is Col.
Said Musa.
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The Israelis, after invading Leb_
anon in June 1982, had little time
that September to attempt to clean
out such caches in Beirut, once the
agreement was reached that resulted.
in their withdrawal from-Beirut it is
widely agreed that such 'arms and
explosive stores still exist in the Leb-
anese capital and surroundings. For
example, the Pentagon's investiga-
tion into the Marine bombing, re-
leased in December, said: "Stockpiles
of explosives, built up over a decade
prior to the Israeli invasion of June
1982, are reportedly still in place
and available for future terrorist op-
erations in and around Beirut."
According to the intelligence re-
ports, these stockpiles provided the
explosives that killed the marines.
The FBI, which was called in to
assist in investigating the Marine
bombing, and other intelligence
agencies have determined that the
explosives, which had the equivalent
of 12,000 pounds of TNT, included
the powerful plastic, PETN, tied
into a sophisticated gas-enhancing
construction that employed propane
gas bottles to greatly magnify the
blast. Another plastic explosive,
hexogen, was used in the French
bombing. The use of PETN and
hexogen, highly restricted materials
that are hard to obtain outside mil-
itary channels, strongly suggests the
involvement of government and mil- -
itaryintelligence services.
Atop-secret intelligence source' reported just before Oct. 23
that Lt. Col Diyab was plan-
ning a terrorist act against unknown
installations of the French and
American forces on Oct. 23. The
substance of this report-including
even the date of a suspected attack,
according to one account-was
passed to the forces. But it was one
of nearly 100 such warnings the mul-
tinational forces had received and it
did not specify the target. Multina-
tional officers, who had dealt for
months with such threats that had
not materialized, concluded little
could be done.
The Pentagon commission inves-
tigating the bombing concluded that
the Marine commander "was not
provided with the timely intelli-
gence, tailored to his specific oper-
ation needs, that was necessary to
defend against the broad spectrum
of threats he faced." In addition the
commission said that the United
States did not have control over suf-
ficient human intelligence-agents,
informers, traditional spies-to track
down warnings and obtain informs-
. tion.on targets and methods.
Haydar.Musawi maintains a busi-
ness office in west Beirut on Assad
Street. There, intelligence reports
show, explosives were loaded or un-
loaded into three pickup trucks, one
believed to be the yellow Mercedes
Benz stakebed truck used in the Ma-
rine bombing. -
In addition to the Marines and
the French, the suicide. commandos
--initially had two other .targets. One
was the Lebanese parliament; the
other has not been determined.
Those operations did not take
place, and the intelligence reports do
not indicate why. The reports show
that after Haydar Musawi said he
was going to report on the opera-
tions to his cousin, Hussein Musawi,
he claimed he would return to "ex-
plode the situation in Beirut." ,
Intelligence officials are perplexed
by a reliable intelligence report that
Haydar Musawi asserted that he lost
three of his members in the Oct, 23
operations. Lone drivers were in-
volved in the Marine and French
bombings. It is -not known how or
why :a third commando might have
been lost. One-.analyst said a third
may -..have been killed in a practice
run.
Intelligence officials also place
some significance on the intercepted
communications, which show Hay-
dar Musawi emphasizing that the
attack on the French and U.S. forces
was not so much to remove the
forces from Lebanon, as is widely
believed to be the motive, but rather
because France was shipping arms to
Iraq and supporting Iraq in its war
with Iran. According to the reports
on Haydar Musawi's assertions, the
U.S. forces were attacked because
the Americans were not opposing the
French decision to back Iraq.
Israeli officials have called atten-
tion to this apparent motivation.
Other officials said it was cer-
tainly one of the reasons, but by no
means the exclusive or even chief
3
reason for the bombing. Citing wide-
spread Syrian complicity in the Ma-
rine bombing, the officials said that
the bombing served multiple pur-
poses, and the Syrian policy is clear-
ly to get the United States and en-
tire multinational force out of Leb-
anon.
The intelligence agencies, using
communications intercepts and other
highly classified methods, have de-
termined that the strongest Syrian
connection to the bombing is Lt. CoL
Diyab. He used a code name, Abu
Nidal, which is also the name of a
well-known international terrorist.
who has ; no known connection with
the Marine bombing. Officials be-
lieve the code name was cleverly
used to provide a false trail. To fur-
ther confuse the picture, it turns out
there are two Syrian intelligence of-
ficers with the last name Diyab, and
the intelligence agencies are not sure
which one was involved in the bomb-
ings.
One of the two is Lt. Col Abd
Gabar Diyab, who served in the Syr-
ian Embassy in Paris under an in-
telligence cover as a second secretary
in 1980.
The second is Muhammed Khavr
Diyab. In April 1982, he replaced the
Syrian military attache in Paris who
had been expelled by the French
after a car bomb exploded in Paris
killing one person and injuring 63.
Much else is still not known and
may never be known about the
bombing and those responsible.
Since the intelligence gathering was
done after the Oct. 23 bombing, and
because much of the material . is
based on highly classified intercepts
of communications, sources and
agents, officials said it is unlikely
that any official or public case would
be made by the United States or any
other government for some time.
f a case had to be made. in a
court of law, several officials in
U.S. and foreign intelligence
agencies said, they might-not be able
to convince a jury. Several others
said that the wealth of detail and the
volume of circumstantial evidence
could make a provable case. This is
probably what led Secretary of De-
fense Caspar W. Weinberger to say
publicly a month after the.bombing
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that those responsible were "basic-
ally Iranians with sponsorship and
knowledge and authority of the Syr-
ian government."
That was the strongest public
statement made by any Reagan ad-
ministration official connecting the
bombing to Iranians and Syrians.
Officials have said that Weinberger
opposed the Marine presence in
Lebanon and, as the defense secre-
tary, felt a deep personal responsi-
bility for the death of 241--men
under his command.
Other Reagan administration of-
ficials, particularly those in the
White House and State Department
who have to deal diplomatically-with
Syria, have kept their 'distance'from
such a direct, public accusation: Dip-
lomatic officials note that Syria will
be central to any negotiated settle-
ment that might result in a face-
saving withdrawal of the U.S. Ma-
rines from Lebanon.
After the bombings, a large num-
ber of people were observed rushing
out of the Iranian Embassy in .Beirut
into waiting cars that sped off Loan
unknown destination, presumably
the southern suburbs controlled by
Fadlallah.
"It only takes them three minutes
to get out of government-controlled
areas," said a Lebanese intelligence
source.
Soon after the incident, an un-
known group calling itself the Islam=
is Holy War claimed responsibility
in telephone calls to news agencies.
Intelligence officials said they are
virtually certain no such operational
group exists, but that it is a psycho-
logical warfare arm covering the ter-
rorist acts of various Islamic groups.
Two days after the bombings, the
group published a statement in Bei-
rut newspapers that intelligence of-
ficials said quite accurately charac-
terizes the-degree of fanaticism felt
by some-but only some-of those
involved in the bombings. The pub-
lished statement said: -
"We are the soldiers of God and
we crave death. Violence will remain
our only path if they [the mulitina-
tional forces] do not leave. We are
ready to turn Lebanon into another
Vietnam. We are not Iranians or
Syrians, or Palestinians. We are Leb?
anese Moslems who follow the dicta
of the Koran."
Washington Post staff writer
John Ward Anderson and research-
er Barbara Feinman contributed to
this article. The next will appear
Friday.-
Governments of Syria, Iran
Deny Supporting Terrorism.
The governments of Syria and Iran have denied direct or indirect
support of terrorism.
Abid Kahani, spokesman for the. Syrian Embassy in Washington,
said in an interview: "We are against international terrorism. We are
suffering from it. At the same time we are against aggression and we
want self-determination. President jHafez] Assad has said that the
U.S. supports terrorism-not on the part of any administration, but
in general.".
As for the Oct. 23 bombings in Beirut, he said: "If the U.S. did not
have troops outside the U.S., there would not have been that incident.
We never did it. They say we did because the Bekaa Valley is alleg-
edly controlled by us but it was not 10 percent controlled by us."
Said Rajaie Khorassani, delegate of the Iranian mission to the
United Nations, commented that "any group which terrorizes another
group is a terrorist group.... When the Russians-invade Afghanistan,
or the Americans go into Beirut, that is terrorism, and more terrorism
.follows after that."
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ARTICLE APPEAREN
Ox PAQE
WASHINGTON POST
3 February 1984
Message From
Iran Triggered
Boinbing Spree
In Kuwait
TilE ERROR FACTOR
This article, written by Richard Harwood, is the
second in a series of stories on terrorism reported. by
Harwood. Bob Woodward and Christian Williams of
The Washington Post staff.
KUWAIT-In the brutal trail of terrorism in the
Middle East today, a human fingertip recovered from
the wreckage of the American Embassy in Kuwait has
become a kind of Rosetta stone for our understanding
of these events.
The piece of flesh was from the disintegrated body
of a young Arab who sacrificed himself in the murder-
uuS truck-bomb attack on the embassy nine weeks ago.
His fingerprint revealed his identity: Raad Meftel
Ajeel. And it revealed links to organizations and move-
ments in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon whose religious and
political fervor has soaked in blood the region's desert
sands and cities.
Ajeel, who also used the name Badran, was a 25-
year-old driver for the Sultan trading company, Ku-
wait's answer to Sears Roebuck. He arrived in Kuwait
last September with an Iranian passport and a recom-
mendation for a work permit.
Within a month he was involved in a plot to assault
in one grand action the embassy and seven other tar-
gets: the headquarters building of Raytheon Co., an
American corporation now installing a Hawk missile
system in Kuwait; an apartment house occupied by
Raytheon employes; the control tower at the international
airport; the Kuwait Ministry of Electricity and Water; the
Kuwait Passport Control office; the French Embassy and
a major petrochemical and refining complex at the port of
Shuaiba. The instruments of destruction would be car
and truck bombs of the precise type used for major ter-
rorist actions in Lebanon last year.
What else Ajeel and his comrades had in mind is
Part 2
something of a mystery. According to evidence later
obtained, they had brought into Kuwait by boat-
probably from Iran-stocks of explosives for the bomb-
ings. But they had also brought in large stores of more
conventional weapons-rocket-launched grenades, ma-
chine guns, rifles, pistols and detonators of Soviet,
Western European and U.S. manufacture, all of which
were hidden away in safe-houses in three neighbor-
hoods south of the city. Were a series of assassinations,
or a coup, planned for this little oil domain on the Per-
sian Gulf?
No answers to those questions have been forthcom-
ing since the coordinated bombing attacks of Dec. 12
and the arrest of numerous suspects who, according to
Kuwait authorities, confessed in writing and on tape
that they collaborated with Ajeel.
Reports from the CIA and Israeli intelligence au-
thorities establish that final approval for the operation
came directly from a message carried to Kuwait by a'
cou iei from Iran - and that planning
for it took place in Switzerland and
the ekaa Valley of Lebanon.
Of equal significance to those who
would unravel and understand the
terrorist chain in the Middle East,
however, are the political and reli-
gious. roots of Ajeel and his com-
rades.
Of the 22 men directly involved in
the, aims smuggling and bombings
(four are still being sought), 18 were
native-born Iraqis, all of whom were
members of the Al Dawa movement,
an Iraqi opposition group now based
in Iran. Three were Lebanese, two of
whom were Shii S1QmLi ho_
have been linked to Hussein
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 Declassified and Approved For
Mus_wlxi. an anr.igovernment Leba-
nese mil:tarv commander implicated i
by intelligence azencies in the bomb-
incs of the U.S. Marine complex and
the French military headquarters in
Beirut last Oct. 23. The third Leb-
anese was Elias Fuad Saib, 23, a
Christian mercenary brought into
the operation to wire the-bombs.
F or Americans, Arabic names
and Arabic organizations
F present problems of compre-
hension. We can grasp the concepts
of Weathermen, Slack Panthers and
the Puerto Rican terrorist FALN. Tt
is:these distant and alien groups that
tend to baffle us.
Al Dawa, for example, is no
household name in. the United
States. But it is a name important to
this story. It leads us back to Aya-
tollah Ruhollah Khomeiri, the ruling
figure in Iran; to Mohammed Hus-
sein Fadlallah, the militant Lebanese
Shiite leader who has been impli?
caled-despite his denials--in the
Marine and French bombings in Bei-
ret; to Hussein Musawi, Fadlallah's
strong-arm lieutenant; to the Hakim
Mothers in Iran and their connec-
tions to the Middle East terrorism
industry.
Raad Ajeel's fingertip helped open
the window on all this. But the basic
cork on Al Dawa-totally unrelated
Co. contemporary terrorism-was
done by a scholar now at George-
tbwn University, Hanna Batatu, in
a 'h article on underground Shiite
movements, published in the Middle
East JournaL
t The story begins in Najaf, Iraq, in
fie 1960s. Najaf is a holy city for the
Shiite branch of Islam, a center for
theological studies and debate.
AAbout 10 percent of the world's 400
ipillion Moslems are Shiites; the rest
are Sunnis or members of smaller
sects:)
Naiaf in those years was a place of
intellectual ferment. Khomeini was
there from 1964 until 1978, an exile
.from the shah's Iran. Fadlallah was
there as a student. Najaf was also
the home of the chief Shiite theolo-
gian, Muhsin Hakim, and of Ha-
kim's three sons, all of whom are
now active in Iran. And Najaf was
the home of a brilliant, young Shiite
philosopher and writer, Sayyid Mu-
hammad Baouir Sadr.
was, Batatu has - written,
the intellectual godfather of
Al Dawa Al Islamiyah-the
meaning in English is the. Islamic
Call. It-was 'a call for a return to
God's dispensation,' Batatu wrote, a
call that "necessitates a"social rev-
olution' against 'injustice' and 'ex-
ploitation,' but it is a revolution
which has a 'universal' rather than a
?' class' character and one in which .';
I* virtuous rich and the virtuous
poor= stand shoulder to shoulder."
'This message found fertile ground
in the peasant and working class
township of Baghdad called
,'hawrah. With the encouragement
of some of Sadr's theological col
leagues in Najaf, "the call" led to the
formation of Al Dawa as .a revolu-
tionary party of protest against the
ruling authorities.
There were disturbances and dis-
orders and-.a repressive response by
the government of Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein. Dawa leaders were
executed. Notable. theologians in
Najaf were harassed-and put under
surveillance, including chief theolo-
gian Muhsin Hakim and at least one
of his sons. Thousands of Iraqis, the
Hakim sons among them, fled to
Iran. Fadlallah returned to Lebanon
to begin his career of militance. Kho-
meini left the country, later to
emerge as the spiritual leader of the
Iranian revolution in 1979. He took
with him from Najaf his own version
of "the Islamic,call" and an abiding
hatred of Saddain Hussein.
Baquir-'Sadr, whose writings had
inspired the Al Dawa dissidents and
left . their mark on future militant
Shiites, had such stature in Iran by
the end of the 1970s that Tehran
radio began referring to him as the
"Iraqi Khomeini." To the Iraqi ruler,
Saddam Hussein, Sadr was an intol-
erable threat to is Baath Arab So-
cialist regime: he aroused the masses
too much. Sadr and his sister, Bint
Hudah, were arrested and executed
in 1980, along with a number of the
theologians of Najaf:
That was the year that Raid
Ajeel, the bomber of the American
Embassy in Kuwait, and his brother,
Said, were put under death sen-
tences by Saddain Hussein. They
had been swept up in the Al Dawa
Release 2012/01/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807600023-9
movement and participated in what
the Iraqis called "terrorist attacks"
such as grenade assaulfs on police
-stations.
Saad was caught and hanged in
Baghdad. Raad escaped to Iran to
join the quarter-million refugees
from Iraq including many Al Dawa
followers who had'preceded him. His
movements there, if they are known,
have not been revealed. But it is rea-
sonable to assume that he came in
contact with and was brought under
the wing of the Supreme Council of
the -Iraqi Islamic Revolution, headed
by Mohammed Baquir Hakim, one
of the three brothers from Najaf.
The Supreme Council provides
humanitarian assistance to the ref-
ugees. But it has other functions,
including the recruitment of Iraqi
refugees for Khomeini's Revolution-
ary Guards and, according to the
leftist French magazine Jeune
Afrique, plays yet another role as a
kind of parent organization for four
operational terrorist groups. Al Dawa
is one of them. The Mujaheddin is
another and it is led by Baquir Ha-
kim's brother, Aziz.
The council also has links to
the Islamic Amal faction in
Lebanon, headed by Hussein
Musawi, a follower of Fadlallah who,
upon his return from Najaf, created
the militant Hezballah (Party of
God) in Beirut and brought. into it
.the Lebanese elements of Al Dawa.
These are the men-Fadlallah and
Musawi-who have been implicated
in the bombings of the U.S. Marine
and French installations in Beirut
.last October, though both have de-
nied involvement.
Whether Baquir Hakim and his
Supreme Council recruited Raid
Ajeel for the Kuwait operation, sent
him to the Qom or Ahwaz training
camps in Iran and provided him
with a passport 'are elements of his
history that have not been made
public. CIA intelligence reports in
dicate that one member of the
Hakim family, then residing in Ku-
wait, was the head of the bombing
operation, and that planning for it
included Sv,ian officers, ShiitgJeat
ers and Iranian intelligence repre-
sentatives.
It is characteristic of terrorist op-
erations with obvious state-sponsor-
ship that "deniability" safeguards are
COZ:iL JED
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LiXays built into the planning; the
chain of responsibility invariably has
missing links. But it is inconceivable
that Ajeel and his comrades were
sent off to Kuwait with no training
at all, just as it is inconceivable that
such an intricate operation was
sp.^ntareously mounted out of the
industrial neighborhoods of Kuwait.
What is known beyond doubt is
that Ajeel and most of his collabo-
rators entered Kuwait from Iran,
that the explosives and weapons
were shipped in by boat and that the
final planning for the Dec. 12 action
began in October, the same month
the bombing plans for the Marine
,and French installations in Beirut
were completed and carried out.
The 22-man team, according -to
Kuwaiti and Ariierican investigators,
was divided into seven cells orga-
nized according to the "cutout" prin-
ciple, which means that. the mem-
bers of each team were isolated -from
all the other teams; they did not
even know one another's names.
Planning sessions involving team
leaders and the operation's supervi-
sor were held in safe-houses in the
neighborhoods of Jleeb Shuyoukh,
Firdous and Sabah Salem
Ajeel's first assignment was-to buy
or rent the vehicles needed for the
Dec. 12 operation. He acquired five
Subaru passenger cars, a Subaru
van, a Buick passenger car and two
.trucks, one manufactured by Gen-
eral Motors, the other by Mercedes-
Benz.
Other operatives acquired dozens
of liquefied petroleum gas tanks,
each filled with 25 to-30 pounds of
butane or propane. The tanks were
loaded into the mission vehicles and
hooked up to large charges of the
powerful explosive hexogen (also
known as C-4 and RDX), which is
used by military forces-around the
world in artillery shells, mines and
bombs and for structural demolition.
It can generate an explosive force
twice as powerful as TNT.
On the night of Dec. 11, seven of
the vehicles were parked at the se-
lected targets to be detonated the
.next morning by timers or remote
control devices. (It is of incidental
interest that the car-bombs at the
Raytheon business and residential
facilities were placed by one of the
Lebanese Shiites-Yusif Musawi, 28,
thought by intelligence agencies to
be a relative of Hussein Musawi, a
chief suspect in the Beirut bomb-
ings.) The eighth vehicle, the Gen-
eral Motors truck, was held back for
Ajeel's mission: a direct attack on
the U.S. Embassy.
Ajeel set out from the southern
suburbs in the truck, probably about
9 am.. on the morning of -Dec.-12.
His route probably took him along
Gamal Abdel Nasser Street and then
onto the Gulf Road on which the
American Embassy is located. Ajeel
turned off the Gulf Road into a res-
idential street on which the embassy
entrance 'is located. t t 9:35 a.m. he
crashed through the embassy gate,
drove into the parking lot and det-
onated his load 10 feet from the em-
bassy's administrative building.
He was, investigators concluded, a
genuine "kamikaze," because he need
not have died in the explosion. His
lethal load was connected to two det-
onators. One of them, a safety fuse,
would have allowed.him 20 minutes
to attempt an escape. But'he chose
the instant detonator which meant
he chose instant death.
The car and truck bombs at the
other targets were exploded by tim-
ers and remote control devices in the
45 minutes after Ajeel died. The toll
from all the explosions was five
dead, 87 wounded and severe prop-
erty damage at some of the sites.
The destruction would have
been worse if the Lebanese
Christian mercenary, Saib,
had been a more skillful demolitions
man. His wiring of the bombs was so
amateurish that only 10 of the 45
gas cylinders on Ajeel's truck explod-
ed. The same defects minimized the
power of other bombs that day.
The trial of the Kuwait plotters is
to begin next week, despite a con-
certed campaign of intimidation
from Iran. The state radio in Tehran
has repeatedly demanded the release
of the terrorists and has threatened
the Kuwaiti government with dire
consequences if the trial proceeds.
Many of these broadcasts have been
made in the name of Al Dawa.
Under Kuwaiti law at the time of
the bombings, hanging was the ul-
timate penalty for such acts. But a
new penalty was decreed on Dec. 29:
"limb amputation or death," and
"the amputations would be carried
out on two limbs -simultaneously,
severing the left arm and right leg or
vice versa."
To risk such punishment, men
need motivation. In the case of a few
members of the Shiite sects; such as
Al Dawa, Hezballah and Islamic
Amal, both religious and political
motivations are involved. Terrorists,
especially the unsophisticated, are
promised places in paradise as par-
ticipants in jihad, the Holy War.
But great political passions are
the major forces behind these
events-the passion - to punish
France for siding with Iraq in its war
with Iran; the passion to punish the
gulf states for the same offense; ,the
passion to punish America, which
Iran calls the Great Satan, for var-
ious international crimes; the passion
to drive the Americans, French, It-
idians and British out .of Lebanon;
the passion to wage war on Israel
and its benefactors; the -passion to
destroy Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
In these political crusades, the
fanatical recruits of Al Dawa, Hezb-
allah and Islamic Amal become ter-
rorist pawns in the larger game of
such nations as Syria and Iran. They
are moved around from country to
country-in the name of Holy War,-
dealing death to strangers-and to
themselves.
One of the leaders of Al Islamic
Amal al-Islami, Mohammed Taki
Mudarissi, went to the heart of it in
a recent interview given in Tehran.
He said: -
"In one week I can assemble 500.
loyalists ready to -throw themselves
into suicide operations. No border
can stop me. We are coming to the
end of the world. Presidents and
ministers are eating each other up.
Military men are traitors. Society is
corrupt, The privileged, the notables
are not worried about the poor. Only
Islam can give us hope."
The next article will appear Sunday.
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ARTICLE APPEARED
OI PAGE
This article, written by Chris-
tian Williams, is the third in a
series on terrorism reported by
Williams, Bob Woodward and
Richard Harwood of The Wash-
ington Post.
LONDON-Former secretary
of state Henry Kissinger was on
a list of potential targets com-
piled by the three-man terrorist
team that shot and severely
wounded Israeli Ambassador
Shlomo Argov in London on
June 3, 1982, according to un-
published documents in the files
of Scotland Yard.
The handwritten phrase
"Kissinger and the Israeli ambas-
sador" was found in the gun-
man's apartment. along with
what officials said was material
identifying more than 100 poten-
tied targets, including the Ku-
waiti ambassador, 16 Saudi em-
bassy vehicles and various Jew-
ish organizations including
schools, a youth center, a syna-
gogue and the Jewish Blind
School of London.
Kissinger made trips to Lon-
don in the two months preceding
the Argov shooting, in April and
May 1982. He and Argov, who
have known each other for 20
years, both attended a reception
held by a British publisher on
one of these trips, but no evi-
dence was developed to suggest
that Kissinger was a more seri-
ous target than anyone else on
the list. Kissinger said through a
spokesman last week that he had
never heard that his name was
on the list.
in fact, the wide range of
name: collected by the terrorists,
WASHINGTON POST
5 February 1984
Abu Nidal Targets Backers
Of Mideast (2oniproniise
attacks in the last six months, including a
TM ' '
r,
OR concerted campaign against officials of Jor-
FACTOR
Scotland Yard sources said,
showed that a violent interna-
tional incident, not a specific .
political execution, was the goal.
The randomness of the list
served to reinforce the notion
that no one is safe, and it gave
the attack and its aftermath a
global resonance of horror.
Argov was not selected for
death until just hours before the .
attack, when his name-was de-
tected on a list of guests expect-
dan, which has pursued a path of relative
' moderation in Middle East affairs.
ed to attend a. reception at the Dorchester
,Motel.
. The shooting, however extemporaneous,
-had another impact: Three days after the.. ,attack, Israel cited it as the provocation for
the invasion of Lebanon. In that invasion,
Israel ravaged the Palestine Liberation Or-
;ganization, an,avowed enemy of Argov's as-
sailants.
The terrorists were operatives of Abu
? Nidal, a name for both an individual and a
?-inovement that even within the ranks of
-world terrorism represents what is most
-ruthless and indiscriminate. Also known as
-Black June or Al Asifa, the group strikes
moderate Arab, Palestinian and Jewish tar-
gets. Its leader, Sabri Banna, whose war
name is Abu Nidal, was expelled from the
PLO and sentenced to death in 1974 on
,,charges of plotting the murder of Arafat.
A review of intelligence files and inter.
views with officials in London and the Mid
' dle East show that Abu Nidal, with the cori-
tinued state support of Iraq and Syria, is
now expanding its operation with:',new cam-
paign of murder. Intelligence officials link
the group to as many as 50 terrorist plots or
The Jordanian ambassador to India was
shot in New Delhi Oct. 25, and Jordan's am-
-bassador in Rome was wounded the next
day. In November, a security agent of Jor-
-dan's embassy in Athens was murdered. On
- Dec 29, at the Jordanian Embassy in Ma-
drid, one aide was killed and another wound-
ed when they were sprayed with 9 mm sub-
,-- fire. Officials say they have
.traced each of these attacks to Abu Nidal
agents, and in some instances the group has
taken responsibility for the attacks.
n London, unpublished evidence from
the trial of the three terrorists who at-
tacked Argov, all of whom are now serv-
ing prison terms of 30 to 35 years, provides a
...chilling portrait of terrorist personalities as
;.well as a case study of how they entered the
-.,bustle of London to spend months under
cover-sifting newspaper accounts, observing
the diplomatic community, mapping routes,
identifying cars and obtaining weapons and
-hand grenades in preparation for an eventual
strike.
Patient and professional, they researched
their mission with little apparent concern for
"their local institutional adversaries. The
`leader of the trio, Nawaf Rosan, was inter-
viewed at 7:35 a.m. the day after the shoot-
ing by officials who identified themselves as
representatives of Scotland Yard.
"Pleased to meet you," Rosan replied, ac-
cording to a confidential report. "What is
'"Scotland Yard?"
Abu Nidal, who dispatched the London
.terrorist team on its mission, is a native of
- Tel Aviv now in his early 40s. A shadowy
figure who has escaped assassination by slip-
ping over Middle East borders in the guise of
a Catholic priest, he is an expert at negoti-
ating the ever-shifting terrain of Arab pol-
itics.
He has maintained formal offices in Iraq
..,and downtown Damascus, behind an iron
gate emblazoned with crossed Soviet-de-
.1AQWZ VVED
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signed hal hnikov rifles. According to a
high-pl^ced Israeli intelligence source, a sur-
veillance team sent to report on the possi-
bility of killing or kidnaping Abu Nidal with-
drew after "we ran smack into Iraqi int.elli-
gence."
The Red Brigades were smashed by Ital-
ian police, the Baader-Meinhof gang has
been jailed and the PLO has been forced out
of Lebanon. But the Abu Nidal group, num-
bering between 500 and 1,000 persons, has
survived. Its goal is the instigation of mili-
tar; action for a Palestinian state, and its
method is to halt or disrupt all attempts at
compromise and political negotiation in the
region. Its operations typically are military in
nature, featuring close-in personal attacks
with Polish WZ-63 machine pistols (used in
the Argov attempt) and hand grenades
aimed at slmmagogues and restaurants as well
as ambassadors and PLO spokesmen.
Abu Nidal's power to terrorize moder-
ate spokesmen is not disputed, and
events have borne out his threats. In
a newspaper interview in 1978, Nidal said
that. "anyone who tries to take a hand in our
affairs wih have his hand cut off."
Issam Sartaw?i. an Arafat aide who had
proposed a dialogue with Israel, commented
t.o a reporter for the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz.in 1982. "I shall tell you only this:
Sabri Banna is a psychopath. His men are
the most dangerous killers. Tney are capable -
of anything;."
Sartawi wits shot to death in a crowded
hotel lobby in Portugal by Abu Nidal assas-
sins on April 10 last year,
Of the Lyndon assassination team, much
is now knowr.. Rosan, the leader, arrived in
England in the fall of 1981, and was joined
later by his two accomplices. Rosan imme-
diately enrolled in the Francis King School
of English. At his trial, it was brought out
that in his exercise book he had practiced
again and again four English words: explo-
sion, ransom. hijacking and assassination.
On June 3, with their target finally select-
ed and the operation under way, Rosan and
Marwan Banna, a Nidal relative who was to
drive the getaway car, arrived at the Dor-
chester Hotel. They left the engine of their
yellow Renault running, and took up obser-
vation positions.
The third member of the team, gunman
Ghassan Said, arrived separately, armed with
a WZ-63 machine pistol. As Argov left a re-
ception and bent to enter his car, Said fired
a single 9 rim- bullet through his head, and
fled. Argov's British bodyguard gave chase,
and during the pursuit Said turned and fired
one shot at him, after which his pistol
jammed. The bodyguard then shot Said in
the neck, and he was arrested.
Rosan and Banna escaped in the Renault
and went to Said's apartment, where they
gathered incriminating lists of potential tar-
gets. But they were stopped by London po-
lice only five miles from the Dorchester Ho-
tel.
"They are cool, professional assassins,"
said Roy Amlott, the prosecutor in their tri-
al. "It goes for all three of them that they
showed very little concern for their own po-
sition throughout the trial. Their operation
was very well planned, and they were only
caught because Argov's guard chased Said
and was able to,. hit him with one shot at a
range of 20 yards while being fired upon
himself, and because Banna panicked and
ran to. the getaway car." .1
A security ward at the nearby Hilton
strong, almost haunting impression with
those who have dealt with him as a man who
has a very clear, unwavering idea of his func-
tion in life. For him the war is over. He has
done his duty.
The jury in his trial was out for four days
before reaching a verdict. London authorities
who have seen the most professional of crim-
inals buckle under the wait, noted that
Rosan was cool every minute. He smiled
when the guilty verdict was announced.
"Prison.is a bonus," one source said. "If he
weren't in prison, he'd be dead. Those were
the alternatives when he undertook the as-
signment."
When asked who had recruited him,
Rosan replied with one word: "Myself."
When asked who had instructed him to
take part in the operation, he said: "Some-
body. .1 don't know his name. Because it is
secret. They call him Salim."
But Rosan would provide no more infor-
mation on "Salim" and was evasive under
repeated questioning. He said there may
have been a fourth member of the. London
team named "Muthanna," but insisted that
was a code name and he knew no more.
He swore at his trial that he was Jordan-
ian, which the authorities now believe. But
his passport is Iraqi and it states he was
born in Baghdad. His political goal, he has
said, is the creation of one large Arab state
encompassing most of the Middle East from
Libya to Iran.
However Rosan was recruited and direc-
ted, he achieved the goals of his terrorist out-
fit in London, just as they have been
achieved by scores of other assassins since
1973, when as the PLO representative in
Baghdad Abu Nidal declared war on Arafat
and heaped scorn on his own death sentence
in a statement to the Beirut weekly Al Diyar:
"I am perfectly capable of reaching out for
the vacillating leadership of the PLO to
carry out my own sentence against them."
At first, his enemies list included Syria,
The name Black June was adopted after
Syria intervened on the Christian side in the
Lebanese civil war in June 1976, causing the
radical Palestinians there to flee in rusty
steamers to the safety of Cyprus.
B y December of that year, Syria was
accusing the group of an 'assassination
attempt on its foreign minister, and
Abu Nidal terrorists. had already attacked
the Semiramis Hotel in Damascus, killing
four guests, with 34 wounded as Syrian po-
lice forces counterattacked. In Amman, Jor-
dan, that year, they hit the Intercontinental
Hotel, leaving nine dead.
-~-?Vr rem
O~7i1 VED
Hotel noted Banna's agitated sprint, and
recorded the license number of the Renault
as he and Rosan drove away. When he
learned there had been a shooting the guard
gave the license number to police, and the
car was stopped.
"If Banna had just strolled to that get-
away car, they would have been all right,"
said Amlott.
The terrorists maintained an air of seren-
ity during their six-week-long trial. Rosan
told a person close to his case that the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon that followed the Argov
shooting was his "mark on history,".and that
Yasser Arafat-whose forces the Israelis at-
tacked-was his enemy because he had "sold
out to America." Rosan was the oldest, cool-
est and "roughest". of the three, according to
Amlott.
"The one who showed the most outward
appearance-of confidence was Banna, he was
the extrovert," Amlott said. "Said, who ac-
tually pulled the trigger, was very difficult to
fathom out. He was withdrawn, quiet, almost
intellectual, but filled with self-doubt. The
character of Said didn't match his being the
one to pull the trigger."
Unpublished writings taken from Said's
London apartment show. a certain amount of
despair and uncertainty. The English trans-
lation of one of his Arabic writings before the
attempt on Argov's life reads:
"Night, universe, sacrifice, suffering and
conscience.
"Where am I living?
"I must define who I am.
"The world gets nastier every day.
"Everything appears to be established.
"I have one door in front of me."
R osan is reported to maintain a com-
pletely isolated existence in prison,
where he is well-behaved. One of his
few moments of emotion came, according to
a source, when he discovered his Moslem
prayer rug had been stolen. He has left a
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By 1978. Abu Nidal's group had grown in lations in Cairo. And last November, sources Two years later, on Oct 9, 1982, the gre-
impact, energy and effectiveness. The Lon- said, his agents were found with a car bomb nades and the machine guns were used in an
don representative of the PLO was mur- on the street in Amman, Jordan, where both attack on a Rome synagogue, according to
dered. Yussef Sebai, editor of Cairo's Al the American and British embassies are lo- the intelligence report. A 2-year-old child
Ahram newspaper and a confidant of then cated. was killed and 34 worshipers were wounded.
president Anwar Sadat., was assassinated in The death list is incomplete. It does not "The modus operandi is to give the team
Cyprus. The PLO chief in Kuwait was killed. record all the terrorist attacks suspected of the privilege t o pick the target ... . They
In Paris, Izziddin Qalaq and Hadad Adnan, Abu Nidal, or his many foiled attempts. But will hit children, the elderly because they
the top PLO representatives, were exe- it is a list that makes its point to those who don't care," said a former head of the Israeli
cuted-Qalaq machine-gunned, and Adnan oppose him and to those who support him: equivalent of the CIA, the Mossad. "That is
blown up with a grenade. that he is a definite factor in the politics of what terror is all about."
. In Islamabad, gunmen went office-to- the Middle East. Without nuclear weapons Also contributing to this report were
office, killing four persons, but were unable or battleships or tanks, he is one man, John Ward Anderson and Barbara Fein-
to find their apparent target, PLO chief of whereabouts now believed to be Damascus,
mission,
mission, Yousuf Abu Hantash, who remained who has proved the efficacy of terror tech- man. The next article in this series will ap-
behind his desk. Abu Nidal claimed niques to the Middle East and Europe. Pear Wednesday.
credit for all. And there is something else at work in
During this period, according to intelli- Abu Nidal's use of the terror factor. His ca-
gence sources here and in the Middle East, pacity to outrage the world is served as well
principal Abu Nidal financing came from by today's global communications as by ma-
Iraq. Maj. Gen. Yehoshua Saguy, the head of. chine pistols and grenades.
Israeli military intelligence from 1979 to When Abu Nidal struck Argov in London,
1953, said in an interview two weeks ago: there was no possibility his act would go un-
"During my time, [Iraq] was giving from $20 trumpeted. The more heinous the crime, the
miii on to $50 million a year to him, usually. more urgent the news. Television control
in cash. I am 100 percent certain that Abu rooms in Tehran, London, New York and
Nidal agents used the Iraqi diplomatic pouch Jerusalem are simultaneously flooded with
to transfer terrorist. material . . . . It hap- video images within hours of each terrorist
pened time and time again. They shipped attack, and can be channeled instantly on
pistols, explosives, hand grenades, whatever the air.
was needed for the mission." Radio news delivers instant bulletins. The
In 1981. Abu Nidal assassins murdered editor of the Jerusalem Post, Ari Rath,
the head of the Austria-Israel Society, killed i learned that Argov had been shot while lis-
the PLO chief in Brussels and attacked a tening to the 1 am. radio news in -his office.
Vienna synagogue with machine guns and He stopped the presses and inserted a bul-
grenades, killing two worshipers and wound- letin on page one.
ink 20. Intelligence sources say Abu Nidal has
In September 1982. in Madrid, Abu Nidal that most valued of clandestine organiza-
men murdered the first secretary of the Ku- tions: one that is solidly in place, with a
waiti Embassy. The next week, four persons proven method in an effective style and a
were wounded on the steps of a Brussels syn- communication and logistics system that
agogue by Abu Nidal members armed with permits the carrying out of his policy from
their WZ-63 machine pistols, the Abu Nidal India to Austria, from Athens to Britain.
signature. A secret intelligence report states that in
It is a standard weapon issued to Iraqi June 1980, Abu Nidal dispatched two of his
tank commanders and, at 13 inches long and men from Baghdad in a Mercedes car with
weighing about four pounds, it fits handily in 20 hand grenades and two automatic weap-
a diplomatic pouch. It can be fired one- ons hidden in the fuel tank. They were ac.
handed, like a pistol. With the forward grip companied, for cover purposes, by -a crippled
folded down and the wire stock extended, it man with no knowledge of their mission.
becomes a fully automatic submachine gun.
When Abu Nida] forces attacked a restau- At the Bulgarian border, customs
rant in the Jewish section of Paris in 1982, agents searched the car and discov-
six people died and 22 were wounded. Two. ered the weapons. The Abu Nidal
of those killed were Americans. men were jailed for two weeks. The Bulgar-
On two recent occasions, intelligence ian Embassy in Baghdad requested that
sources say, the Abu Nidal group has per- their government in Sofia release the men,
according to an intercepted communication.
haps attempted attacks on American targets. The men were freed, and their hand gre-
In August of last year Egyptians foiled an nades and the machine guns returned to
operation by several Abu Nidal'agents who them. They proceeded to Italy.
had entered the country posing as students.
Their alleged targets were American instal
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AP.TICLB APPEARED
ON PAGE^_&: L-
WASHINGTON POST
8 February 1984
Frail in Killing Of Gemayel Kb' Le ads to Syria
- - - -- , "Why the Marines Are in Lebanon,"
'
This article is the fourth in a series on
terrorism reported by Bob Woodward, Rich
ord Harwood and Christian Williams of The
Washington Post.
Syrian officers arranged the assassination
of Lebanese president-elect Bashir -Gemayel
in 1982, according to intelligence officials in
the United States and IsraeL
Communications intercepts/' and surveil-
lance reports show that the young Lebanese
man who ' placed the bomb ,that killed Ge-
mayel was directed by a Syrian intelligence
captain who reported to the head of -Syrian
intelligence in Lebanon. The reports show
that Syrian Army and Air Force intelligence
officers were aware of the planned bombing.
Some Israeli officials say they have evi-
dence implicating Syrian President Hafez
Assad himself in the Gemayel murder, which
was a central event in a series of terrorist acts
'end reprisals that have devastated Lebanon
in recent years. The Israelis, however, decline
- tot. specify the intelligence upon which -their
conclusion is based.
"The Bashir Gemayel assassination was at
the initiative of the Syrians," said ' ehoshua
Saguy, who was chief of Israeli military intel-
ligence at the time of the bombing with the
rank of major general. "It is based on hard
evidence that President'Assad initiated it. It
was done through the intelligence officer of
the Air Force."
Since Israel is facing Syria in their mutual
occupation of Lebanon, its intelligence might.
be inclined to overstate Syrian involvement in
the Gemayel murder. But the claim is backed
up by senior intelligence officers in the Unit-
ed States, whose relations with Syria are
more flexible.
with
"That assassination could be~race wDf
the Syrian government out we zuc uv~ ?- -
'-A Ano c nib
CIA official last week. Anot`--S?
intelli ence official while not disut-
of the -
in that Assail was aw ar__
sassination plan in advance said_it
would difficult if not 1monc ~aie,
Drove what his exact role had
IE TERROR
FACL'OR
he wrote: "Following the assassina-
tion of Lebanese president-elect Ba-
shir Gemayel. the entry of the Israeli
Defense Forces in Beirut and the
eART tragic massacre of Palestinians in the
Syrian ,officials have denied any Sabra and Shatila camps, U.S. forces
role in terrorist bombings and asses-! were reintroduced."
sinations.'They say that the massive The first Marines returned to-Bei-
Israeli.,invasion of Lebanon In June rut Sept:. 29, 1982, and their contin-
1982 is the primary cause of the cur- ! Tied- presence there has become a
rent chaos in the country. - source of great political and strategic
In the terrorist arsenal, political controversy in the United States and
assassination is the weapon With the in Lebanon;-where .the government
gravest consequences, setting in mo- of Bashir's brother, President Amin
tion a chain of events that can re- ' Gemayel, teeters.
verberate unpredictably and uncon- Bashir Gemayel was a strong lead-
trollably-through many nations. The er who showed some promise of con-
murder ,of Bashir Gemayel is a case trolling the intense political and re-
in point. Today, nearly 18 months ligious forces in Lebanon. His broth-
later,.it is clear that some very large er Amineelected president one week
portion of the, disarray in Lebanon after the rassassination, has been un-
stemsfrom that deed. able to bring stability to the country.
:-ess-than one. week af' the - The 53-year-old Assad and his
L -assassination, Phalangist-units intelligence agents have played a key
of the Lebanese Army entered role in undermining the Gemayel
two -refugee camps in Beirut, Sabra government in neighboring Lebanon.
and Shatilla, and slaughtered hun- Assad has - ruled Syria since 1970
.dreds of :Palestinians, most of them when lie seized power in a coup and
women and children. The massacre aligned his country with the Soviet
i
Union.
an anguishing investigation by nion. His government has been
called a police state. In 1982, his
.an independent Israeli commission, V forces brutally crushed a rebellion in
which concluded. that Israeli leaders . ? Hama, Syria's fifth-largest city, ? kil-
'shoul(1ia. ' anticipated that there- ling at least 10,000 residents. Am-
fvenge-minded Phalangists. they al- nesty Iiiternational, the London-
:lowed into the camps would go on a based human rights group, says that.
killing rampage. This report precip- Syria has jailed thousands without
itated a shake-up in the Israeli goy- . formal charges and regularly en-
ernment and military leadership, gaged in physical torture including
including the -resignation as defense beatings, electric shock and sexual
minister-of.Ariel Sharon and the re- ab ses. Assad has used western-
style of Saguy as military intelli- style diplomacy, such as when he
gence chief. V V released the American shot down
In turn, the Gemayel assassin- and captured by Syrian forces in
tion and refugee camp massacre Lebanon, Lt. Robert Goodman, to
brought the U.S. Marines back to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. But intelli-
Lebanon as part of the multinational gence reports on the Bashir Gemayel
peace-keeping force. killing show a different side of As-sad
Robert McFarlane, .President. Rea- and his agents.
gan's national security adviser, last It has been known for some time
week cited the Gemayel murder as
the event that triggered the return of jOOZV22? %U
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that the bomb that killed Bashir Ge-
mayel was placed by Habib Char-
touny. a 26-year-old member of the
Syrian People's Party in Lebanon.
Intelligence reports from agents and
communications intercepts indicate
a deeper Syrian connection. Char-
toum?'s "operator" was named as a
Captain Nassif. of the Syrian intel-
ligence service, who is said to have
convinced the young man that the
bomb would scare rather than kill
Gemayel.
.assif reported in 1982 direct-
lv: 'to Lt. Col. Mohammed
G'anen; who at the time was.
in charge. of--Byrian intelligence op-
erations 'in :Lebanon, the : reports
show..From -there the intelligence re-
ports say that both Syrian Army and
Air Force- intelligence were involved
in or aware of the planned bombing.
In addition, Assad's brother, Rifaat
Assad. who heads the country's se-
curity forces, allegedly had some de-
gree of awareness, 'according to the
reports. And. said'Israel's Saguy, the
former '.military intelligence chief,
"... that means President Assad- I
....even his brother Rifaat wouldn't
dare do it without his knowledge."
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe
Arens said he could not confirm that
'the assassination was initiated by
the Syrian president. But Arens said
he is convinced that Assad was
aware of the assassination plan in
advance and approved of it.
In an interview in Tel Aviv on
Jan. 23, Arens said: "I think we
know with certainty today that the
assassination of Gemayel, the pres-
ident-elect of Lebanon, the attack on
the American Embassy in Beirut [on
April 16. 19831 the attack on the
Marine compound in Beirut, the at-
tack on the French military position
in Beirut [both on Oct. 23, 19831-
all of them were carried out with the
knowledge of the Syrian establish-
ment.
"There's little doubt that with the
knowledge and approval at least, if
not more, of the president of Syria
violent acts were committed against
the U.S. armed forces. As far as we
know, nothing gets done in Syria
without Assad's approval-nothing
of any consequence gets done in
Syria without Assad's approval or
disapproval. I don't know if there's
another state in the world today that
is run by one man to the extent that
Syria. is
"His control is so total in Syria.
It's really very difficult, the line be-
yond which [someone) doesn't have
to get his approval goes much: far-
ther down than you might ordinarily
think."
When asked to address the larger
question of whether terrorists gain
their political objectives, Arens said:
"It depends on the texture and the
strength of the society against which
it is directed. In the case of Lebanon
it certainly, works. They ;killed Ba-
shir Gemayel and it's not the same
Lebanon anymore. I don't mean to
say if:he were alive there wouldn't be
any-problems in - Lebanon, but
there's no doubt that the problems
have been .compounded very signif-
icantly 'by his death.
"There's no doubt thaarthe threat
of the use of terrorism has its effect
on the Lebanese body ypolitic,
There's no doubt that the threat of
the use of terrorism has its effect on
the Arab. population..... People
know that they can get knocked off
and they are very careful about what
they say .,and what they do in fear of
getting.knocked off.
"If you look at the problem of
Lebanon, it has been influencer) a -
very large :measure by )terrorism. I
would say -every one of the leading
personalities -in the Lebanese polit=ical -scene today is affected by his
fear of terrorism and probably would
be acting differently, each in his own
way, if you could somehow by magic
wand remove that fear that he'd be
knocked off if he steps out of line.
"I think that's true for the pres-
ident of Lebanon [Amin Gemayel].
I'm -sure that's true for the prime
minister -of -Lebanon. I think that's
true of Mr.' 'Jumblatt [Lebanese
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt].
That's 'true of Nabih Berri [the Shi-
ite Amal leader] and all these people
going right down to the people in the
villages who are being held in line or
being pushed in a certain direction
by the knowledge that is transmitted
to them that you either walk the line
or you get knocked off."
A senior Israeli Foreign Ministry
official-said that Jumblatt once told
a group of Israeli officials: "If I do
not do what you Israelis want, we
will have a dispute, but if I. do not
do what the Syrians want, I will get
killed."
2,
Jumblatt, much like Amin Ge-
mayel, finds himself in command by
virtue of murder. His father, Kama!
Jumbiatt, who had fought for a unit-
ed, socialist and secular Lebanon,
was killed in March 197 7 when
Walid was 28.
W slid, known as a fun-loving
graduate of the American
University in Beirut, was
comfortable in jeans and upon' tak-
ing command of the Druze faction
still had a cutout of Brigitte Bardot
on his apartment wall. He had never
been active in politics, which had al-
.ready taken its toll on his family
-with the political assassination of his
aunt, grandfather, and several other
ancestors.
He said then that his main mis-
sion would be -to fight against the
partition of Lebanon, observing, "My
father was-an obstacle to partition,
and that's why they killed him." Of
his own'tenuous position, he said: "I
have to 1''ve with death. One of the
first things I.have to do is to, make
my will."
Israel's Saguy said terrorism in
Beirut has been effective in putting
increasing pressure not only on the
internal leaders but also on the Unit-
ed States and Israel. He added this
note of caution: "I think it would. be
counterproductive for the United
States to find evidence of terrorism
by Syria .... The United States has
to .deal with them in a plan to get
out of Lebanon. If not.. the United
States will have to deal with the So-
viets on that issue."
The next article in this series will
appear Friday.
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Art - c-,.s A.PPL RED
ow P
This is the fifth article in a
series on terrorism by Christian
Williams, Bob Woodward and
Richard Harwood of The Wash-
ington Post.
Ibrahim Tawfiq Yousef, 49,
serving an 18-year sentence in
Israel's Ramla Prison, is in many
ways typical of terrorists now in
jail from London to Kuwait.
In 1969, Yousef was arrested
in Switzerland after he and three
comrades charged a taxiing El Al
passenger jet with machine guns
and hand grenades, wounding six
passengers. Released from jail
two years later in a prisoner ex-
change.. Yousef returned to
George Habash's Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine,
and he was arrested in 1976
while trying to smuggle a Soviet
SA7 - antiaircraft missile into
Nairobi for what authorities said
was to be another attack on an
El Al plane.
Friendly, with a self-deprecat-
ing smile, Yousef is a well-be-
haved prisoner who continues to
work on his English. In_his life,_a -
personal tragedy (the death of
his father in a bomb blast in Je-
rusalem in 1946) combined with
the discovery of a system of be-
lief (Marxism) to plunge him
into a world of cold-blooded po-
litical murder.
is Yousef a terrorist? "Of
_course not," he said in a recent
interview. "I am a revolutionary."
When his prison term is com-
pleted, he said, he plans to re-
turn to the Habash movement.
"There are many ways to strug-
gle. Wherever they put me, on
whichever side-political, eco-
nomic or military-1 will work."
Yousef is a high school grad-
uate from the town of Ra.mallah,
on the Jordan River's West
Bank, where at 17 he was intro-
M-IERRROR
FACTOR
MHO ARE THEY?
People From Diverse Pasts and Faith Enter
World of Cold Blooded Political Murder
WASHINGTON P05T
10 February 1984
duped to Marsism,'he said, by the
"reality" of conditions in Palestinian
camps. The bomb that killed his fa-
ther and more than 90 other persons
was set by the Irgun Zionist under-
ground group, led by Menachem Be-
gin, at,British military headquarters
in what is now the King David Ho-
tel
Yousef is married, with three chil-
dren-including a daughter in Can-
ada and a son who went'to college in
-the United States and remained
here. His wife is supported. by his
other son. Before his last arrest,'
Yousef worked as s radio operator in
the Kuwait fire brigade.
is terrorist colleagues in the
Middle East share no com-
mon social origin. George
Habash,-Yousef's leader, is a medical
doctor, a graduate of the University
of Beirut who -was once "the guy
every girl's mother wanted her to
marry," according to a former U.S.
ambassador, to Lebanon. Nawaf
Rosen, the leaner of the 1982 Abu
Nidal attack on Israeli Ambassador
Shlomo -Argov in London, is a for-
mer Iraqi army colonel The terrorist
who blew himself up in the Decem-
ber attack on the American Embassy
in Kuwait was 'a mechanical. engi-
neer, and his 20 accused co-conspir-
ators included four other engineers
and a data processing supervisor
from a Kuwait savings bank.
Their goals are as disparate as
their backgrounds: They are Pales-
tinians, demanding their own home-.
land and the elimination of the state
of Israel; they are pan-Arab revolu-
tionaries, demanding a united Ara-
bia from North Africa to the Orient;
and their ranks also include religious
fundamentalists who seek the impo- ,
sition of an Islamic state and Islamic
Iaw ,throughout the, region, without
.regard to 'secular, national bound-
aries.
The wave of Islamic fundamen-
talism, which arose with Iran's rev-
olution in 1979, now surges all the
amv to RamlaPrison.
There, a sweet-faced giant named
Tafik Machadma,.a Sunni Moslem,
has adopted Iran's Ayatollah Kho-
meini as his leader, formed a cell of
30 Khomeini devotees and reformed
and educated more than 100 other
prisoners, his warden confirms. We
took criminals who use 'hash, who
use opium, who use morphine. With
the use of the Koran they began to
pray;" Machadma explained. 'Whey
soon didn't use anything. We also
teach them to read and to write."
achadma, now 28 and as-
signed as a prison cook, was
arrested three years ago
.after he-bought 180 hand.grenades
and-25 guns, organized 60 people
into -a group he calls "The Family
Holy War,' and prepared to wage
attacks against the Israeli Army. He
said be got the idea from the Koran.
..His aim is "to make here ]in Israel)
an Islamic government."
In conversation, the devout, soft-
spoken Machadma, like his -Marxist
fellow inmate Yousef, demonstrates
the social poise characteristic of
hhany captured Moslem terrorists.
His constant smile shows the humil-
ity and obedience prescribed by the
Koran 'and also serves the ancient
tradition of hospitality of both the
Arab and Persian cultures. Like his
fellow inmate Yousef, who does not
believe in a God, Machadma was
eager to explain his life's work and
the death it might involve.
Yes, he said in answer to a ques-
tion, "God ordered us not to kill ci-
f15Z,vr_.D.
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vilians in the Koran. But also that
any man who puts in our way a
bomb, to not let us go our way, we
have to kill him. We have to put him
beside, put him outside."
An example, he said, was the shah
of Iran. "The shah and all of his
.family, they wanted to get in the
way of Khomeini and the Islam
group, so they had to be killed. And
all his group also. Everyone -who
wants to stand in the way of Islamic
groups in all ways, he -must be put
outside," That included Americans,
he said.
Would Machadma, if so or-
dered by Khomeini, take a
bomb into an American in-
stallation and blow.himself up? .
"If I. am active in Iran and Kho.
meini orders me to, I will do it with
a smile on my face," Machadrna an.
swered. 'But he cannot order me
now. He is not the imam [spiritual
leader) of all the Moslems in the
world. He is only the imam of Iran.
If he became) the imam of all the
Moslems, and he ordered me, then I.
would do it"
There are millions of Moslems
-who find nothing in the Koran that
inspires acts of terror, -but
Machadma said it was from his read-
ing of it that he got the idea for
"The Family Holy War"-including
the need for 180 grenades and 25
guns. Asked what the Koran, written '
centuries ago, had to say aboutgre.
_ rides; - he_eXplained: "Then. they
didn't know about bombs. But there
was something else. It is written to
bring everything that can' be used as
a force. Everything! All the kinds of
forces! Each kind of force I can get, I
have to get"
Who are the terrorists? They in-
clude Arabs and Iranians, Europeans
and Jews. (The Jews call themselves
TNT-Terror against Terror-and
they demand that Israel use more
extreme methods against radical Pal-
estinians. Police believe it was Jew-
ish terrorists who tried to dynamite
the Dome of the Rock, an. Islamic
holy shrine, in Jerusalem last
month.) The terrorists are. Iranian
Shiites and Abu Nidal assassins re-
cruited in Iraq and Syria, they are
men and women, educated and ig-
norant, vengeful or convinced of
their politics or guided by what they
consider the illuminations of God.
The American response to terror-
ist. acts, however they are justified by
their perpetrators, frequently is one
of shocked 'innocence. To Said Ra-
jaie Khorassani, however, America is
not innocent, but ignorant.-and its
posture of opposition -to terrorism a
national hypocrisy. Khorassani is the
delegate of the Mission of Iran to
the United Nations in New York, a
former philosophy professor in Iran's
Tabriz -Province who worked with
revolutionarystudents after the'seiz-
ing of the 'American hostages.- ?
'Who -are the -terrorists?" Khoras-
-sani -said incredulously in a four.
hour -interview .in his New York of-
fice in December. -'You could be. I
could be: Anybody could ? do it.
There are individuals who when they
look at the world see only the dirt
and the treachery and the awful
things, and they throw themselves
into destroying it. The rest of hu-
manity reacts to that."
"People are not like a mountain of
stones!" Khorassani said. "Their re-
action is overwhelming. These ter-
rorists, you call them, stand out, and
they surprise you. This is because 10
or 15 years ago there was a calm in-
ternational, atmosphere, or so it
seems to you. =But in fact the- neo-
colonialism-was .-overwhelming _the
people, so the people struck back.
But you were unable to see the peo.
p)e at. all! During. this period, the
U.S. was in the forefront of imperi-
G,
bled -in Lebanon to conduct suicide
bombing missions. Last month, U.S.
warships in the eastern Mediterra-
.nean were put on alert against "ka-
mikaze" airplane attacks. In Wash-
ington, the fear of suicide attacks led
to the erection of barricades around
the. State Department and other
buildings.
Human bombs, however, get lim-
ited credence in the Middle East.
"There are many fewer suicide
squads than you think. The Shia
aren't crazy, and they don't want to
:. =die any more than -you do," said Dr.
Ariel Merari, the foremost Israeli
student of terrorism. His Project for
the Study of Political Terrorism at
Tel Aviv University keeps a staff of
13 busy collating and tracking each
known terrorist for entry into a com-
puter. -
"My reasoning is simple." Merari
said. "Between Sept. 15, 1981, and
now, there were 28 major attempts
by terrorists. Of these, five were sui-
cide attacks: the April car bombing
of the American Embassy in Beirut:'
the Oct. 23 attacks on the Marines
and the French in Lebanon; the at.
tack on Tyre; and the Dec. 12 attack
on the American Embassy in ' Ku-
"wait Suicide attacks are by far the
most .impressive. You will note that
'in Kuwait, they tried to-do 11 at-
tacks -at once, 'but only the suicide
attack really suooeeded. If they had
.more suicide .bombers they would
have used them. They do not There
simply are not thousands of ' heart-
pounding Shiites ready to charge to
their trucks." .
According to Merari, suicide at, a
terrorist method is in fact not new,
or notably courageous. "For example,
10 IRA [Irish . Republican Army)
men starved themselves to death in
prison in 1981. That takes 50 to 60
days, and they 'gradually became
blind, and -their mothers - were
brought in to try to talk them out of
it. That is much more impressive
than simply driving a truck bomb to
its target, especially since the explo.
sion is probably remote-controlled
anyhow."
As for reports that Iranian sol-
diers in the war with Iraq have
voluntarily walked onto known mine
fields. he said: "That sort of valor is
common in war. Look at Gallipoli.
Look at France, where the best ed-
ucated British youth climbed out of
alism. The 'U.S.S.R was in the fore-
front of another 'kind of imperial.
.ism.'
Yes, :..Xhorassarii repeated, . he
could : ?be a terrorist himself. "Sure.
Why -not? 'We are killing ourselves
.'like that In Islam, it's a personal
commitment, not a state commit.
ment You. JAmericans) can easily
justify arms to Vietnam, but not
this. When you come to our country,
we have to defend ourselves: The
people do not have battleships or
supersonic planes. When we say.you
are arrogant .. this is what' we
mean. It's because you have great
power and you think that you can
just use' it, anyway you-want to, and
nothing will happen. But you see,
something will happen. It is happen.
ing."
I n December, President Reagan
told a private meeting of Citizens
for America that 1,000 terrorists,
many of them Iranian, were assem-
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the trenches over their own dead
and into the machine guns, following
order: "
Conventional warfare, no matter
how horrible, follows a western tra-
dition. Terrorism does not. It re-
quires martyrs. The Shiite sect of
Islam traces its system of beliefs to
the oric'inal martyr Hussein, mur-
dered in the 7th century. In Europe,
too, there are martyrs-of the
church, of inquisitions, of stake
burnings. But Americans are less
accustomed to martyrs. This culture :
tends to celebrate the meaning of a
life,, rather than the meaning of a
death.
To a certain extent, it is a matter
of cultural vocabulary.
"The concept of human bombs is
not inconceivable to .[some Islamic
fundamentalists);" said Prof. Moshe.
Sharon, bead of the Institute of
Asian and African Studies at the He-
brew University of Jerusalem. You
cannot understand the East with
terms taken from a 'western dictio-
nary. That's like describing a base-
: ball game with cricket terminology.
Friday is not the Sabbath, the Koran
is not the Bible. And suicide is not
-what. we think itk,
"I will go fur her and say that
western society -is guilt-oriented, and
eastern is shame-oriented, meaning
that the most important thing is 'to
not bring shame on your family. The,
I;oran says be obedient to Allah and
your leaders, - -and all derives from
that We doubt, but they believe. So
we developed :democratic institu-
tions, but They developed obedience.
"I'D tell wu a -story," Prof. Sharon
said. "You know; after the -massacres
at Sabra and Shatila camps, we con-
ducted a big investigation and aired'
'everything in the newspapers and.
-there was a lot of. soul searching -in
Israel Well, the Arabs couldn't be-
lieve we did that-they thought we
had humiliated ourselves. An Arab
.friend said to me, 'in Israel you do
not have democracy, you have
fawda. That's the Arabic word for
anarchy."
There is no anarchy in Ramla
Prison, where under the
watchful eye of Israeli warden
Yoseph Polak, Ibrahim Yousef told
his tale of commitment
He went to Switzerland to attack
the El Al plane in 1969, he said, for
the propaganda value: "This oper-
ation was a long time ago, but then
our case was uriknown in the would,
and we wanted to make some [inci-
dent) to show the whole world there
is a Palestinian people who want to
Asked why he was released- after
two years, he replied with a laugh,
"Good question!".According to Israeli
files, upon Tejoining Habash, he
trained and traveled m' Damascus
and South Yemen,' and ventured'as
? far as .North: Korea and Vietuani.an
-missions.
Of his'1976.aiission to Nairobi..-he
said: "I was just -to take' [the SA7.
..missile) from one man, to give to an-
other. I don't -know where' be was
going with it, and I don't care."
Yousef, who said he has been
treated well in prison * ("That's the
warden's job"), .has. only,. one corn-
plaint: that be wound .upin Israel at
all. "We. were -arrested' in Kenya.
Tortured by Kenya police, with cig-
arettes up [the] nose, and.-kicked in
]the -groin] and especially [the] kid-
neys. Then after 10 'days, Kenya po-
lice say, 'OK, yoq're. finished, You.
can go.' Then we.Are :taken to ItbeT
:.airport with -bags b on 'our heads so
Journalists. cannot+ see us ' and and
then in the.plane 7-feel like a?pin in
my arm and -thin. I don't ' know
where I am. After three ?or four days
I wake up, and is a small -room,
and I am being questioned,..and it is
in . IsraeL: After -,44 -months they
brought in ?to-Ramlaand Put us -in
the .Eichmann:. I'ewerr where ,INaii
mass murderer Adolf)'Eichmann was
held, and where -we stay for 19
months." -Eater, he said, be was re-
leased to 'the general 'population 'of
the prison. Be feels it was wrong
that he was brought to Israel at all
"I did something in -Kenya,".he said.
"Why send me to. Israel?" -
" Not all the terrorists in Ramla re-
main committed- to violence,.-
howev-er. .
Yosef A. Mansert, a thin, ironic
figure in a faded field jacket, said he
has now rejected violence. In 1971,
Mansert helped place a bomb on a
bus in Tel Aviv. The explosion in-
jured three people. Mansertwas cap-
tured and sentenced to life in prison.
He would not plant a bomb again,
r7
he said. "If anvbodv told me to dc
that now, I believe I would convince
them not to do it" The Palestinian
cause, he said, "will not be achieves.
by these actions, because we neea
the help of the Israeli people. If we
work against these people, we will
push them away from us so we will
wind up working against ourselves."
'The final article in this series will
appear Sunda'
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ART I
Dl PdGc '
WASHINGTON POST
12 February 1984
U.S. ponders Morality of Striking Back
This article is the last in'o series
on terrorism by Richard Harwood,
Bob Woodward and Christian Wil-
liams of The Washington Post. , -
In Saudi Arabia on Friday the
13th of January, a young prince with
a half-smile on his face sipped tea
and discoursed on the affliction of
terrorism.
"These small countries," he said,
"know that the only people who have
stopped the American superpower
have been terrorists. They stopped
you in Vietnam. They stopped you
in Iran. They are stopping you in
Lebanon. That is why they attack
you. It is the only way."
American novelist Don DeLillo
put the matter in another context
One of his fictional characters says
of the terrorist. phenomenon:
"America is the world's living
mN th..There's no sense of wrong.
when you kill an American or blame
America for some local disaster. This
is our function, to be charactertypes,
to embody recurring -themes that
people can use to comfort them-_
selves, justify themselves..... We're
here to accommodate.
-Whatever
people need we provide. People
expect us to absorb the impact of
their grievances."
The impact of those grievances on
American diplomacy, politics and life
has not been inconsequential. The .
coffins of.dead marines laid out in a
warehouse in Dover, Del., are con-
venient symbols for the personal
traumas the country has endured.
But terrorist acts reach beyond fresh
graves and the grief of mothers to
the fabric of the governmental sys-
tem.
It may not be entirely true that a
mob of Iranian students drove
Jimmy Carter from the White
House, but they helped. History may
not record that a fanatical truck
driver in Beirut and anonymous kill-
ers in the right-wing "death squads"
of El Salvador possessed the power
to wreck Ronald Reagan's policies in
the Middle East and Central Amer-
ica.
But they have hurt those policies
and may yet-trouble this president
when the election comes around in
November.
The speaker- of the Iranian par-
liament was astute as well as hyper-
bolic last year when he declared:
'The death of one U.S. marine is
better for us than if 200 Phalangists'
.are killed.... If the Moslem people
of Lebanon fire one bullet hitting a
French soldier, then that -is better
for us than the dropping of a hydro-
gen bomb by any of the so-called
Islamic countries."
i Like the Arabian prince, he was
saying that the American political
system is easily taken hostage by the
"weak" If they are right, as seems to
be the case, this is one of the mo-
mentous international developments
of the 20th century.
A democratic society, with its par-
tisan passions and imperatives, may
be incapable of absorbing these
wounds. Closed societies-the Soviet
Union and Cuba, to be precise--can
shrug off the terror in Afghanistan
or Angola.
President Reagan, a week after
taking office, naively declared that
he would put an end to all that
'Let terrorists be aware that when
the rules of international behavior
are violated, our policy will be one of
swift and effective retribution.
=~..We live in an era of limits to our
powers. Well, let it be understood
there are limits to our patience."
But each year he has been in
office, the number and sever-
ity of terrorist acts against
Americans, American institutions
Rid American policies has increased.
Worldwide, terrorists killed more
-mericans and inflicted more polit-
ical humiliations on the United
States in 1983 than in any year in
our history.
The "swift. and effective retribu-
lion" promised by Reagan three i
years ago has not occurred. One re-
sult, of no great consequence, is that
the president is now being ridiculed
by some of the intelligence opera-
tives he has sent out to deal with the
problem.
In Beirut a few weeks ago, one of,
these operatives-in the presence of
another American official-mocked
the administration's "retaliation"
against Iran for its suspected in-
volvement in the bombing attacks
against the American Embassy and
the Marines in Lebanon.
The "retaliation" was nothing
more than adding Iran to the list of
"terrorist" countries ineligible for
unrestricted imports from the Unit-
ed States.
"Golly, gee," the official said with
disgust, "we really showed 'em this
time, didn't we?"
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His solution is terror directed at
terrorist: and their sponsors:
"We have got to get our hands
dirty, really dirty." Then, appropri-
ating a line out of an old Bengal
Lancers movie, he made a modest
proposal: "Cut off a few Moslem
heads, stick them in the belly of a
pig, deliver the package to their
comrades with a message: `You
aren't, going to Paradise. You're
going to be nothing but pig---:
"But, ethically, our society won't
do that kind of thing. We're too
moralistic and legalistic."
. Perhaps. But very tough talk is
now being heard in Washington at
the highest levels of the government.
A serious debate is underway over
ro oals to strike hack at_ ezm ate
using terrorist meth it
c~nad,__ r" ny!5urra, ~trtkac" h~ m'1
itan' o CIA tearns~?```
That such a debate should occur
is another measure of the impact
that terrorism is having on our so-
ciety. It produces frustration, anger,
fear and symptoms of a nation under
siege.
I n various foreign capitals to-
day-Riyadh, Kuwait, Beirut
and in Latin America and Eu-
rope-American embassies, once the
most open diplomatic facilities in the
world, have become fortresses.
They are surrounded by steel,
concrete and sandbag barriers.
Tanks and armored cars are parked
at gates and nearby street intersec-
tions. Visitors pass through metal
detectors.
Windows are freshly coated with
Molar to reduce flying shards of
glass. Squads of hard-eyed security
men, armed with automatic weapons
and rocket launchers, wait in the
wings.
In Saudi Arabia, the deputy chief
of mission, Roscoe (Rocky) Sud-
darth, jokes about his high-priced
government car-an $85,000 Chev-
rolet armored against bullets and
mines. In such places, diplomats and
their families live with fear.
They are taught how to stay alive
by changing their driving habits, the
places they shop and jog and have
picnics. Some of their children write
school essays on the subject.
The fear has come home, too. Bar- l
ricades have gone up at the -White
House, the State Department and
the Pentagon. You can no longer
wander freely through the Capitol.
These precautions have been
taken "rarely if ever because of a
specific, credible threat" explained a
senior Secret Service official, but
rather they "grow out of the general
climate we are in."
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan
(D-N.Y.) worries aloud about that
climate, saying that 1984 may be a
year for terrorist tragedy in the
United States.
"Spectacular" targets are available,
and not merely the president. The ,
political parties will hold their na-
tional conventions this summer,
there will be a World's Fair in New
Orleans, and one of the most inviting
targets of all, will be the Summer
Olympics in Los Angeles.
The apprehension over the
Olympic Games is reflected in
the recruitment -of more than
.17,000 policemen .and -private secu-
rity guards for what was intended to
be a joyous . competition within the
family of man.
But the history of this planet in
recent decades has changed all that.
"Security" and "prudence" have be-
come universal watchwords at the
same time that the realization has
sunk in that there are really no
,places to hide
Diplomats are shot down almost!
routinely in the streets of Paris.
Christmas shoppers at a London de-
partment, store are torn apart by a
terrorist bomb. Four members of the
.South Korean Cabinet are murdered
by North Korean bombers at a me-
morial service in Rangoon. An Iran-
ian exile is blown away in his home
in a quiet Bethesda neighborhood.
Armenian killers stalk Turkish of-
ficials throughout the world. A rock-
et is fired into the federal office
building in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Bombs are detonated in the Capitol
building of the United States.
It is all done in the name of "pol-
itics" -and frequently the actors are
indeed the "weak" of the world,
groups whose causes are so lacking
in popular support that terror, anger
and revenge are all that is left to
them. That situation is being seen in
the United States today where, ac-
cording to the FBI, two-thirds of the
terrorist incidents last year were car-
ried out by remnants -and spiritual
allies of" the old Weather Under-
ground of the 1960s (operating
under new banners) and by left-wing
and right-wing Latins, such as the
anti-Castro band, Omega 7.
One public figure who maintains a
calm attitude toward terrorism in
the United States is the FBI direc-
tor, William Webster. He is fond of
saying that there is no "rising tide of
terrorism here, only a rising tide of
concern." The statistics are comfort-
ing-42 incidents in 1981, 51 in
1982 and 31 last year, most of them
bombings and most of them relative-
ly harmless.
The diminished terrorist activ-
ity in this country reflects, in
part, some FBI. successes in
penetrating and rounding up Puerto
Rican nationalist and Armenian ter-
rorist cells.
This kind of work-penetration
and the gathering of credible inteL-
lizence-is considered the best de-
fense against terrorism, and consid-
nowe* ^ney and tirnp is
erable man TM
going into it.
as=had-some successes
alone these lines- A notable example
was the discovery in 1979 of a riot
by Libya to assassinate America
ambassador to Eevnt. Hermann
Eilts. President Carter sent a sable
directly to the Libyan leedL
Muammar uaddafi, warning him
off. I
`hut the lack of hard intelligence
remains ones the weaknesses in the
terrorist a enses of countries as
the events of 1983 have shown. his i
weakness underlies .the reluctance
the I Jnited States to
and inability of
accuse countries such as Iran and
vrie of direct complicity in s,- omof
those y
2
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"We could not," a leading State
Department official observed, "make
such an ironclad case that we could
go to Congress and ask for a decla-
ration of war."
Nor could the administration
make even a persuasive circumstan-
tial case that the Soviet Union and
the celebrated KGB mastermind the
terrorism of our times.
Nowhere in Europe or in the Mid-
dle East in the course of reporting
for this series did we encounter any
intelligence officers or dealers in
rumor who possessed significant in-
formation of Soviet involvement in
terrorist enterprises.
That is also true of past and
present officials: suspicions are
abundant-but the hard evidence is
not there. Said former -CFA director
Sstansfield\rmer. -
"There is little_ evidence that the
KGB or Soviets are the motivating
force behind terrorism. I would fault
the Soviets in a negative way for not
distancing themselves from the ter-
,rorist support countries. The Soviets there a sense, we Americans felt, in
are not dumb enough to get involved which we had it coming
in supporting indiscriminate terror=